Sunset City

Noir doesn't (apparently) mean what it once did.

I was expecting mystery and I was expecting dark. I got mystery and I got dark.

But not just dark. Black. The blackest.

Sunset City is a short novel set in Houston about a young woman trying to find her way. She doesn't enjoy her work. She doesn't have any family. Her friends are involved in all sorts of unsavory activities. And then one of her friends is found dead. Murdered.

Probably just me but I just wasn't carried away by the story. The Houston references were accurate but they didn't feel distinctive; they felt thrown in. The grit of the story was accurate, I'm sure, but it didn't touch me emotionally.